


Forgotten Villains

by SakuraSnowLady



Category: Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (Cartoon), Tangled (2010)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:15:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23237551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SakuraSnowLady/pseuds/SakuraSnowLady
Summary: A look into how Varian and the Separatists of Saporia took over Corona. Starts at the end of season 1 and ends with Varians redemption.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17





	Forgotten Villains

**Author's Note:**

> Rated T for some language and suggestive themes. Starts off kind of dark but improves. 
> 
> Much more canon than my other story.

Cold. Eery. Silent.

The deepest pit of hell one could be thrown into. And yet there were no flames or fiery pits. There was only cold, stagnant air and a deep sense of despair. 

The cell walls were half lit by candles in strategically placed alcoves. A rat skittered across the hard, stone floor, squeaking as it crawled through the darkness. 

Varian sat in a corner of the cell, staring into the darkness, dark circles under his eyes. He listened to the tomb-like silence around him. 

How many days or nights he had been down here he couldn’t tell, but his first night in this horrible dungeon was something he would never forget...

Keys clinked as four guards led him down the dark hall. They passed cells on either side in the subterranean darkness. Varian’s keen sense of hearing picked up on the flickering of torchlight and the coughing of some prisoner. The cells were half full with hardened criminals. A few were asleep on the hard cots in their cells while others looked at him and the guards with mild curiosity and surprise at the child that was being led passed them to his doom. There was a shadowed alcove at the end of the hall that turned into a dark spiral staircase that led down into the deepest level of the dungeon. 

Here the dark corridor was lit the same, but the cell doors were solid steel instead and spaced farther apart. Varian counted half a dozen of them in total on both sides. This was evidently the level where the worst of Corona’s criminals were left to rot, he concluded, as he was led to the last door on the left. The door creaked open on rusted hinges, an eery sound in the otherwise silent dungeon. He was led into a cell far more spacious than he expected, but with no natural lighting or a barred cell window. The place was in near total darkness other than from faint candlelight.

There was a rattling sound of chains as one of the guards reached forward and swiftly chained him to the wall by his ankles. Then the other guards turned to go without even a backwards glance, slamming the rusty door behind them and sealing their lonely prisoner in for good.

In the darkness and the cold, Varian shivered and slumped onto the cold, stone floor. Ruddiger had already been taken from him. His ride to the castle dungeon had been in a fog. He barely remembered anything, except for the muttered oaths of vengeance he made as a way to distract himself from his new reality. 

When the prison cart arrived at the dungeon, he was booked and stripped of his goggles and apron. Ruddiger was ripped from his shoulders as the guards made passes and jokes about him. They were surprised when he didn’t react at all to the separation of his beloved pet, but he was too far out of it by then. The ride and the previous battle had hardened him, at least externally. 

Nothing had mattered then. 

Now, things were different. 

He was alone and in darkness. Trapped with only his catastrophic failures and mistakes to keep him company. 

He couldn’t sleep more than fifteen minutes at a time that first night. Every sound in the hellish place woke him up, no matter how soft. Be it a rat’s distant squeak or the snore of another prisoner. He had the feeling that he was being watched, but there was no one else in his cell, at least that he could see.

Once he slept for almost 30 minutes, but his dreams were unkind. He had nightmares about his father still trapped in the amber. The battle of Old Corona. The King and Queen and Rapunzel mocking him as he was arrested and led away. Then the black rocks swallowing him, his father and his old village whole. 

Rapunzel.

He felt a burning rage in his chest at the thought of her. She was probably waltzing off into the sunrise with her long blonde hair and her stupid friends to keep her company. Meanwhile, he was stuck down here, left to rot in agony while his father lay trapped in a prison of his own creation.

The anger stoked him, and it was this that kept him awake the rest of the night. That and the fear of his dreams.

Varian, however, was not completely alone. 

There was another prisoner in the cavernous cell, chained to the far wall opposite Varian. In the faint glow of candlelight, his form could just about be seen. He was a skinny, rugged man with a man bun, a short beard, and hard, beady eyes.

He lay as if sleeping, but his eyes were open and watching his new cell mate with careful curiosity...


End file.
